Russell Market & Commercial Street Bangalore

Some of my friends had concocted an idea to skive a day from work and do the downtown markets. It took no convincing at all for me to come too and so one random morning we went into town under the complete leadership of on elf the ladies.

After copious amounts of Masala tea and chatting in the car, first stop: Russell Market. The main market just behind commercial street in Bangalore, selling any kind of produce (vegetables and fruit), meat and fish.

It is still quite clear downtown that this is the 'garden city'.

2 drivers where enlisted for support that day. 1 to drive us around and 1 to take all the shopping -:)

The fish market looked not too appealing to us, but it was not for lack of trying by the vendors

You have to imagine hordes of flies, and every 5 min or so the whole stall being douses in water of a questionable source to make the fish look fresh

Then again - there was worse! The meat market. The smells, the lack of hygiene. pfffff

The poultry shops also where interesting. Live chickens in a case in the bottom, butchered chicken being cooked in the middle level off the stall, and the stripped dead chickens hanging at the top. So the love chickens had something to look up to?

We also did a few pot & pan stores

And then proceeded to the fabric stores and the block printing studio in Ibrahim street - not a very flattering picture of us but you get the idea of the shops.

My friends 2 maids also had come and served quite happily as our shopping assistants all morning - what a life!

A nice chat lunch, with a very very long attempt to have a group picture taken with this being the only half ok result.

After lunch we decided to not have any 'undertaking' type tailoring done

and no piercings or treatment for our giddiness either.

After that Anbu came to pick me up as I had to get to work for a few hours after all. He looked almost a little jealous he had not been out with us all morning like the other two guys. Turns out one of the 2 drivers who was with us is our nanny's cousin. And our driver knows this…..really, i have stopped believing this is a city of 8.2 million.

Anyway, after the remainder of the ladies also where done a few hours later the car carrying the shopping was full…..the big blue tub is Duuk's new royal bath -:)

Duuk's friend's birthday party

Duuk has a lot of little lady friends on Windmills (our compound), one of those ladies recently celebrated her birthday in an elaborate manner. And so Duuk put on his Indian party costume, brought his favorite date (me -:) and of course went to the party.

There was a very serious attempt to do some coordinated dancing, singing & gymnastics with all the kids

Which was fabulously chaotic of course

Duuk was happy, but more shy then usual and mainly completely overwhelmed

More Selfies

At the Dubai Airport Lounge

 Tired but soooo happy to be going home

 Early morning one with Rick, ready for our 'adventure' dat at the Foreigners Regional Registration Office with his papers

 With mr cuty pie, also early morning after too short a night

So,…how's Duuk doing these days?

Fabulous! He is running / wobbling around the house, doing 80% of the time things he should not be doing, played quite well by himself (just with the wrong things!), is widely loved and gives love, grins all day, eats well and loves life to the max already.

Can't give you any statistics on how he is doing, as by now he is already 3 months overdue for his 1 year check-up and a couple of days for the 15 month one. No3 right…..gets nothing much of anything in terms of parenting.

Thank you notes

We struggle a little with the remuneration of our staff at home. Relatively we pay them a lot, however it is of course actually very little. 2 of the 3 are very bad with money management and hence giving them large amounts of cash tends to not fix anything. It goes to something they can't afford and don't need, is confiscated by family members or by alcoholic husbands. We are very very happy with all 3 of them though and are especially grateful for the love and care they give our kids. So we decided to express our appreciation in another way - by getting them something they all could use: a laptop. All had been asking us for garage sale laptops or old ones from friends - the issue with that is that by the time people do not pass them on to their own kids etc anymore they are usually really old and something is wrong with them. Also we would never have 3 so who would get it? Did not want them to spend a fortune, by their standards, on something that would soon not work anymore and hence we bought a laptop for each - with the specific message that it was to support school for their teenage kids (ranging from 11 or 12 to 18)

All 3 where very very happy and appeared to really have given the laptops to their kids. Our drivers wife even put it away and did not let her daughter have it until she had finished her exams and received a pass result.

Subsequently we got some nice messages….

From Sarala's 18 year old a text message:

"morning madam this is s sarala son here…very much thank you madam for gifted me a laptop..i never gonna forget u in life once again thank you madam :-):-):-)"

And from Anbu's 16 year old girl, who just passed her exam a note:

Chandrama's kids also where happy she said and mainly gave her a lot of hugs….which is good, she loves hugs and boys of 11 and 14 or 12 and 15 probably don't hug there mom often -;0

It is not as if the financial planning is getting any better yet. Driver just announced his daughter's college fees are due, and he wants to borrow the full amount. He asked yesterday and fees are due by the 30th……they have known she would go to college for months, he's been telling me all about it for months, and he saved up……0. When we asked why he had not asked earlier he really did not understand why we thought this was somewhat 'last minute management'. 

pffff…...

Backpack kids

Duuk & Kaat are roughly the same age in the photo's, Rick is about ~5 months younger. Still - a lot of the same -:)

Duuk in Daulatabad Fort, Aurangabad, India

 Kaat at Capillano Bridge in Vancouver, Canada

 Rick in Big Bend, South Texas, USA

Rick the Artist

A few weeks ago Rick had an art exhibition at school. I was fortunately home (since a few hours only but still) and so Duuk and I went to school with Rick to admire his work. Rick was very happy I was there but also proud to show off his brother

To hos classmates for instance

 A self portrait

 Fairytales

 Native style art - freely adjusted to the Pirate theme -:)

 And more pirates

 The whole thing was set up quite nicely with different themed art, also made using different techniques

 For Rick himself some of the 3D art (monsters) was his own favorite.

The week after Rick still felt inspired enough to make Opa Kees this very elaborate welcome sign (he arrived in the middle of the night so Rick could not personally go pick him up) - despite having told me that Art season is over. The whole sign was in the theme of our adventure with caves, bears in the caves, cars on a road trip, bats, a fort…..oh yes…and of course some fighting pirates.

Later on the trip we thought Rick had gathered another impromptu stick collection (we have many of those!) - but it turned out Rick had actually made 'het muizenhuis' (the house from a children's story book we have). Can't you tell Opa?